


Batter My Heart

by lesyeuxverts



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 05:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesyeuxverts/pseuds/lesyeuxverts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minerva has eyes – she knows how to use them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Batter My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> The title, of course, is from John Donne's Holy Sonnet 14.

In the eye of the right beholder, Severus Snape is not all bad. Minerva has eyes – she knows how to use them.

She sees the students leaving the Headmaster's office, teary-eyed but unhurt. She sees the worst plans of the Carrows thwarted at each and every staff meeting – deft manipulations, Slytherin ones, so small that a more casual observer would have missed them.

There are wards and charms on the Headmaster's office that were never there in Albus's day, but she slips through them and feels only the spark of magic on her skin. Severus has not turned her away yet.

In Severus's office, there's nothing to do but wait. Some of the portraits are sleeping, but others nod and smile at her. Minerva thinks that they have seen more than she has, over the past few months – students come to this office for detention, the Carrows come to complain and curse, the other professors here to protest against all of Snape's actions–

He loves Hogwarts. Severus Snape has always loved Hogwarts, from the first year he was a student here. Minerva must have been blind and foolish, to have forgotten that.

When Albus kept this office, it was filled with the whirr of tiny, complex machines that sat on his desk and spun their gears. None of them ever accomplished anything as far as anyone could tell, and if Albus knew what they did, he never told her.

They were gone the first time Minerva came to Snape's office. He had noticed the direction of her gaze, and offered no explanation. He told her what to do, plain-spoken directions in terse words, too few of them – he was always parsimonious, Severus was – and Minerva had fought with him over it, and come away defeated. She thinks she knows better, now.

She waits in the silent office for Snape's return. He is out in the dead of the night, with Voldemort or walking over the grounds of the school, or … Minerva will not let herself imagine what he might be doing, what sacrifices he might be called to make. Her fingers are folded into tight fists, held in her lap. She does not fidget.

When Snape sweeps into the room, smelling like the dark of the forest and bringing the cold night air with him, she stands to greet him. She comes forward to touch him, puts her hand on his cheek – he freezes.

There are words that she cannot say. She speaks with touch, and tries to tell him everything.

"Minerva," he says in a low voice. He captures her hand by the wrist and holds her in place. "This is unwise."

"Wisdom is in the eye of the beholder," she says – it is all that she can say. She lets Severus lead her away from the office with its quiet memories and the watching portraits. She follows him through the corridors of the school that they both love. She follows him, and does not count the steps.


End file.
